River Dee Trust Receives Fantastic Support from the Community

As a charity, the River Dee Trust has to raise funds to support its work on the River Dee. We have been humbled by the level of support throughout the year. In the last couple of months, we have had two fundraising events, which have raised £11500, all thanks to the community and River Dee family.

The 2016 River Dee Trust Auction ended last week, with a fantastic total of £8500 raised in support of the work of the Trust. The online auction which ran throughout November, featured 49 lots generously donated by local estates, hotels, tackle shops, ghillies, anglers and individual members of the public. The support has been incredible and everyone at the Trust has been delighted with the response.

River Dee Trust Manager, Dr Lorraine Hawkins said:

“The auction has been a tremendous success and we are very grateful to everyone who has supported us this year. We were delighted when it closed with a final figure of £8513. We had set ourselves a target of around £7000, so to exceed total raised is fantastic. We have a huge amount of work planned for next year, including removing barriers, IntroDee, improving habitat and tracking smolts, so every penny will be well-spent on safeguarding the River.”

The Fashion’s a Keeper event held at Finzean in October was a great success, as much as for being a great-fun evening as well as raising funds to help the River Dee Trust’s work. We had further great news this week, when Mel Shand – local artist and Trust Director – handed the Trust a donation of £3,000 from the show!

The event, which was jointly delivered by Mel and Country Ways of Aberdeen, actually raised £2,500 on the night. But thanks to the generosity of Buchanan Food of Banchory, who prepared a delicious two-course game supper for 100 people at an incredibly discounted rate, the donation to the Trust was increased.

In a year when the local downturn in the economy is obviously having knock-on effects on charities such as the River Dee Trust, we are incredibly grateful by this extra generosity from local business.

Next year looks to be another busy one for the Trust and there are a number of key projects which will continue throughout 2017. If you are interested in keeping up with all the news from the River, sign up for the newsletter at the bottom of the page.

​With the news and social media rife with the invasion of Pacific pink salmon, we want to give people an update on the situation on the Dee and what we are doing about it. The situation has developed rapidly in the last month.

The smolt tagging and tracking project is a three year programme of work. Fifty smolts, captured in the lower catchment, were fitted with internal acoustic tags and tracked in spring 2016. These smolts were tracked as they migrated through the lower 22 miles of the Dee and inner harbour.

Tackling invasive non-native plants along the banks of the River Dee – such as Japanese knotweed, giant hogweed, Himalayan balsam and North American skunk cabbage - has become a priority for the River Office because of their potential impact on our river and its existing, native species.